


Special Case

by Ezlebe



Series: FBI's Most Unwanted [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Body Horror, Descriptions of Autopsy, Gun Violence, M/M, Military Backstory, Paranormal, Parasites, References to Abuse, References to Suicide, References to kidnapping, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19233094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: “Your new office is headquartered in B32,” Organa continues, “You will share with your partner.”Hux looks up from the folder, mentally finding the room to be in a dark corner of the building that he’s yet to see opportunity to visit. He had been under the impression it was for little more than hard-copy storage. “The basement, Director?”“Yes,” Organa says, tilting her head in visible agreement, “The facilities were… last minute, but I assure you that they will perfectly suit your needs with the X-files.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I kept seeing references on twitter, people talking about AUs, then I started watching the show (again) and now I'm looking at my AU (again), so here ~ I first published this on tumblr almost [three years ago](https://ezlebe.tumblr.com/post/146733836268/more-of-that-dumb-x-files-thing) and [ one year ago respectively](https://ezlebe.tumblr.com/post/178501112958/more-x-files-au-like-two-years-later-their), so warning: I may publish similarly old things from this series in bits over the next few weeks. I have way too much of it.

“First, I would like to say that the Bureau is glad to have your expertise, Special Agent Hux,” Deputy Director Organa says, closing her office door behind him and gesturing at the chair across her impressive desk. It overlooks the streets, but is high enough to easily see the spire of the Washington Monument. “We get fewer medical doctors than you might imagine.”

“Thank you, Director,” Hux says, stepping forward a few paces and sinking down, resisting the urge to press both hands to respective knees like an anxious schoolchild.

“You’re probably curious why I've called you here so personally,” Organa says, nodding shortly and gesturing in the general direction of the lower levels, where Assistant Director Guerrera keeps his offices. “You've been chosen for a very distinct task force, one which also answers directly to me.”

“An honor, Director,” Hux says, wondering if he should attempt a smile, only to decide against it. He doesn’t remember requesting any specific assignments, nor receiving notice that he was being recommended to any.

“The team consists of two members,” Organa says, pulling a folder from a stack and peeking inside with a small hum.  

Hux raises an eyebrow, glancing down and following the folder as it’s slid across the desk. He slowly reaches out and grabs it, wary of the disarray of the pages and notes stuffed visibly inside.

“Your new office is headquartered in B32,” Organa continues, “You will share with your partner.”

Hux looks up from the folder, mentally finding the room to be in a dark corner of the building that he’s yet to see opportunity to visit. He had been under the impression it was for little more than hard-copy storage. “The basement, Director?”

“Yes,” Organa says, tilting her head in visible agreement, “The facilities were… last minute, but I assure you that they will perfectly suit your needs with the X-files.”

“The X-files,” Hux repeats, his mouth falling into a frown for a number of reasons. He glances down and opens the folder, curious if it is actually a mislabeled case file, and forgets to quiet himself when his disbelief gets the better of him. “Ben Falcon Organa?”

It’s likely that this Organa is related to the one across the desk, but Hux has never heard rumor of her having a son, nor a nephew. He glances down further and realizes that he also isn’t legally allowed to hold this file – it seems that a lot of these little notes are sloppy records of _conducts and complaints_.

“Yes, an unfortunate middle name,” Organa says, lips visibly pinching as she answers some unspoken, hardly mattering question. She seems to care little that she’s just destroyed every one of Hux’s hopes to realistically vie for her position, let alone broken basic security procedure. “My partner and I had a dispute over hyphenation and pseudonyms, which resulted in… compromise.”

Hux looks back down at the glowering expression of the younger Organa, glancing across his more obvious features, his sullen frown, and can't help but to wonder if the man got teased. He closes the personnel file, nodding shortly and setting it under folded hands on his lap. He wonders exactly how offensive it would be for him to deny this _special_ task force.

He didn't leave London to become nanny to the boss’ son.

“I am fully aware this comes off as special treatment from your perspective, a clear case of nepotism and an insult to your education,” Organa says, her shoulders falling a marked amount, then quickly squaring back into her usual military professionalism. She glances down at the closed file, then upward to catch Hux’s eye with a firm stare, “However, Special Agent Organa is more than competent. He worked very successfully with the BAU for four years before seeking to establish this department, which was driven by a similar experience as you had with the British Army.”

Hux stares at her, breath catching for a moment in his chest, “I am unsure how stress could qualify me more than any other individual, Director.”

Organa raises an eyebrow. “Stress?”

“…Yes,” Hux says, swallowing a thick well of discomfort at the back of his throat. Is this some manner of test? “Simple stress.”

“Regardless, I only ask, Special Agent, that you give this a chance. In fact, I require it,” Organa says, leaning forward on her desk and threading her fingers together with an expression like brick. “I'm giving you a period of four weeks before you can request a transfer. If you still feel at that time you'd rather be of better use elsewhere, I will sign your paperwork.”

* * *

Special Agent Organa is nearly exactly as Hux had expected him to be after that short glance at his personnel file: spoiled, difficult to work with, and outright rude. He is slightly taller, however, so Hux must give credit as it is due. He certainly towers like a horrible, nagging gargoyle above his significantly shorter mother, especially when he stands up like a ridiculous fool to make a hopeless argument.

Hux would have told Agent Organa of his plans to quit in exactly four weeks, but this seemed a more entertaining way to spend the afternoon after Organa had snapped insults to both his accent and choice of clothing. His _regulation_ choice of clothing, which apparently isn’t up to such standards as ‘creepy layabout hiding in a basement’ or ‘clearly owns a single jumper, single pair of trousers; both black’.

“I don’t want a partner,” Agent Organa says, raising his voice with every next word. He nearly pounds at the desk, only to stop his hand a scant few centimeters from the surface and curl it up into a white-knuckled fist. “I don’t _need_ one.”

“You do,” Director Organa says, maintaining a serene expression through the veritable fit and raising a single brow, “This is the FBI, not a private service.”

“How is he even employed here?” Agent Organa says, leaning farther forward over the wide desk, as if to bodily make a point as he gestures angrily in Hux’s direction. “He’s not American.”

“My mother is American,” Hux interjects, feeling some kind of triumph when a seething breath is aimed down in his direction. His amusement is rather immature, but he doesn’t think it would be noticeable beside the spectacle of Agent Organa barring a pointed turn of attention and a few hundred cameras. “She is from some city in Alaska.”

“Alaska is practically Canada,” Agent Organa snaps, jaw visibly tense and ticking, as if merely speaking to Hux fuels his baseless temper. “And I doubt it has _cities_.”

“Ren,” Director Organa says, her voice steeling into a tone that sounds like a warning. It seems to have a muting effect on Agent Organa’s mood, his shoulders swiftly hunching up and eye-line shifting just behind her. “Do you want me to treat you like how you’re acting?”

“No, Director,” Agent Organa mutters, glancing sideways a moment to glare narrowly at Hux, then looking back to the Director as his hands curl up into fists. His voice lowers into something considerably more restrained than it has been since Hux met him in their new office, if still tense and irregular, “I only ask that you consider my reservations of working beside someone who doesn’t… understand my goals.”

“Your goals are to solve the unsolvable,” Director Organa says, expression relaxing back into something more neutral. She gestures at Hux, “Special Agent Hux is fully qualified to partner with you. He holds graduating honors from every institute that he has enrolled in, not to mention he has a _medical_ degree and was on track to specialize in forensic autopsies.”

“Autopsies,” Agent Organa repeats, his eyes darting to Hux again, only now holding more consideration than ire.

“Yes,” Director Organa says, her mouth pinching in a hard line before it relaxes, an audible sigh escaping, “Did you read the file I gave you, or simply burn it?”

Hux raises an eyebrow, thinking it in jest until he glances sideways and catches the shamefaced expression on Special Agent Organa. Oh, wonderful – in addition to being a violent, selfish brat, his new partner is a pyromaniac.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What the hell is this?” Hux says, staring for a few minutes longer before looking up with a sneer.
> 
> “Parasitism,” Organa says, bizarrely excited in a way that seems entirely within the eyes. “Maybe.”
> 
> “Maybe? Disregarding the near…” Hux trails off, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward to stare at the tiny 2002 on the corner of the file heading. He reaches out and points at it, tapping it with his finger, “This is from fourteen years ago, Organa.”

A large file, discolored and disintegrating, falls to Hux’s desk with a worrying scatter of dusty particles. He stares at it for a short moment, then looks up, sneering at the fool who just delivered it. “What is this?”

“A casefile,” Organa says, his tone something that might be called proud.

“There are no cases,” Hux says, shoving the folder back with a careful application of fingertips. “Your _department_ is a farce.”

Organa leans back on his heels, lifting his chin as a hard line forms across his mouth. “Yours, too.”

“Hardly,” Hux mutters, pinching his lips tight. A quiet squeak draws his attention, and he glances sideways to find Unamo standing in the open doorway. “What?”

“Nothing,” Unamo says, standing still as her eyes draw slowly up and down Organa. She snaps a glove around her wrist and backs out the door into the main autopsy, still muttering under her breath as it falls closed behind her. “Nothing at all.”

Organa takes the interruption as a chance to lean forward and flip open the file, dispersing more unknown into the crisp air. “Look.”

The case sheet on top lists the victim as a white female, brunette, and twenty-seven years old. She was apparently found by a sex worker, then collected by a patrol officer, and the medical examiner clearly tagged the death as accidental before apparently whiting it out, leaving only the ‘suspicious, unusual, or unnatural’ box ominously marked.

The photographs on the next page are unevenly stapled from top to bottom, the first of the initial crime scene with the victim limp on her side in a dirty alley. He glances down with a grimace, to where a photo from the autopsy shows evidence markers pointed at swollen and discolored tissue around her neck and a triad of small marks in two places at the corner of her mouth. Further down, a six centimeter eruption is apparent from _inside_ the abdomen, with such a lack of bruising or coagulation that indicates the victim was blessedly long dead for the event.

“What the hell is this?” Hux says, staring for a few minutes longer before looking up with a sneer.

“Parasitism,” Organa says, bizarrely excited in a way that seems entirely within the eyes. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? Disregarding the near…” Hux trails off, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward to stare at the tiny 2002 on the corner of the file heading. He reaches out and points at it, tapping it with his finger. “This is from fourteen years ago, Organa.”

 “There’s new evidence – “

“Evidence?”  Hux repeats, scoffing under his breath and shaking his head, crossing his arms over the desktop and consequently the gruesome images. “No, if anything, you should send this to the CDC. I believe they’re just down the street.”

Organa leans down, his shadow practically looming and pointing at the street around the woman. “You know where that is?”

Hux shifts his arms and glances down at this entirely random alley. “No.”

“It’s DC,” Organa says, voice lilting upward, “Inside the district.”

“What?” Hux says flatly, raising an eyebrow with a prickle of trepidation.

Organa points at the photo, dragging his finger down and across the gruesome strangulation marks. “This.”

“Well,” Hux starts, inhaling slowly and parting his hands. “It was fourteen years ago.”

“No,” Organa says, standing up straight and pulling out his phone, tapping at his screen for a few moments. He turns it around, showing a rather similar twining of marks and pricks on a completely different woman in the Post, dated _yesterday_.

Hux feels a minor shiver crawl up his back, formulating an entirely immature rationalization for taking a shower only in the icy cold chemical wash station for the next eight to ten months – he’s sure no one would notice.  Although, these women were all found in alleys…

“You think it’s a serial killer,” Hux realizes, glancing between the five, very similar white brunettes with a narrowed eye toward the _astonishingly_ far spread dates; the earliest of the photos is from 1954, grainy and discolored.

“Too much for coincidence,” Organa says, the grip around his phone tightening for a white-knuckled moment.

Hux leans back into his chair, the plastic back hitting the stone wall with a thunk. He exhales, turning his hand up in a reluctant gesture over the photos. “Can you get me the body?”

Organa takes a sharp breath, visibly swallowing, “Yes.”

“Allow me to amend that,” Hux says, reaching out and tapping the edge of his desk before Organa runs out like an elated schoolchild. “Are you cleared to work this case? At all.”

A short pause in the open door, and Organa shrugs tightly, reaching up to scratch at his brow with the hand still holding his phone. “The FBI has prior jurisdiction with the 2002 case.”

“So, no,” Hux mutters, leaning back and opening the lid of his laptop – apparently, he’s making the request. “Wonderful.”

Organa is gone in the next instant, hopefully not off graverobbing or starting a jurisdictional war.

Hux watches the words unfurl on the screen as if typed by someone else, and hesitates a long moment before actually clicking send. What is he even _doing_? He was going to just wait out the next… twenty-three days, sulking around autopsy and measuring his other options until he could quit in good conscious.

* * *

Two hours later, after an uncomfortable conversation with an outright surprised Director, a black bag rolls into autopsy care of the Metropolitan police. The courier and accompanying officer both treat him to a stare like he’s an idiot even as he signs the form.

Hux ignores the narrow glances from the other side of the lab from his own colleagues and directs the body onto a clean table, unzipping the bag with a narrowed eye. He _technically_ hasn’t had his own assignment the entire time he’s been stuck down here, but it’s not as if he doesn’t assist; they’ve both practically been using him as a textbook. He confirms the identity with a glance toward the visible bruising, then reaches for a mask, readying for his first official autopsy – he only wishes it had been for something more legitimate than on a mad whim from the Director’s son.

He gets as far as confirming the measurements and drawing on the autopsy lines before he hears loud footsteps bounding down the concrete steps, and looks up toward the door with a slow exhale. It’s odd, but for some reason it feels utterly ordinary when he puts down his pen to wait for Organa to make his way in.

“The only thing done is bloodwork,” Organa says, waving a visibly sealed file and tearing into it without a scrap of hesitation. He flips up and down the page, brow furrowing in a particularly perturbed manner. “She had a blood alcohol level of .15 and an elevated level of insulin.”

“They’ve had the body over thirty-six hours,” Hux says, feeling almost like calling the supervising medical examiner to complain. It’s good for this absurdity of a case for the body to be untouched, yes, but so unprofessional that his displeasure is quickly taking over the front of his mind.

“Rumor is a senator poisoned a sex worker,” Ren mutters, furrowing his brow at the paperwork and flipping a few pages over his fingers.

Hux scoffs through his nose, pulling his goggles down with a short shake of his head. “Not an excuse.”

“Are you going to cut her open?”

“No,” Hux says, glancing up narrowly and unsure if this is some sort of test – even if Organa seems uninclined to her company, his mother is still Hux’s superior. He could easily report back any manner of incompetency and cause a great deal of difficulty. “Cursory examination is standard procedure, Organa. How long have you been an agent, again?”

Organa raises his eyes, catching Hux with a glare, “Longer than you, _doctor_.”

“Then act like it,” Hux says, reaching out and grabbing the chin of the victim. The flesh is oddly warm, yielding easily to his efforts to look in the mouth, and he forgets to smother his surprise as the jaw practically drops open against his fingers.

“What?” Organa says, apparently too perceptive for his own good. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Hux says, coughing slightly under his breath and shaking his head, “Odd decomposition, is all. I'm sure some… consequence of Metro’s ill-treatment.”

“You can already tell it's odd?”

“I'm not saying it's your sort of odd, I'm simply saying I wasn't expecting the…” Hux trails off, swallowing tightly and gesturing shortly in a silly-feeling cyclical manner. “The… the reaction to the – Wait. Wait a moment.”

Organa raises his eyebrows, “Yes?”

“Well,” Hux says, taking a deep breath and resisting the growing urge to take a few steps back. He has to be professional about this, cleanse himself of all personal disgust until this poor woman is officially lain to rest – hopefully, through cremation. “In the other victims, the parasite took a route into the mouth, correct? Then incubated to maturity and exited with violence through the upper abdomen.”

“Yes, and they found – “

“Don’t interrupt,” Hux snaps, flexing a hand tightly at his side as the other one points at the worrying distended area just under the sternum. “Those bodies were eight to ten days old, correct?”

Organa waits a furious beat before slowly nodding, jaw tight. “ _Yes_.”

“This is merely two,” Hux says, reaching for one of the older files and flipping it open to the visual exam. He flips a few pages, confirming his suspicions and twisting the folder around to show Organa. “This exit wound isn't present on this body, only the strangulation pattern around the mouth.”

Organa stares at the image, then drags his eyes down, visibly swallowing, “Oh.”

“It would be invaluable to have a living specimen of the parasite,” Hux says, reaching sideways and grabbing his carefully lain surgical pens, twirling it between his finger and thumb. He lowers it to the abdomen, hovering above the skin and drawing out a careful dotted line. “It fed on the pancreas of the other four, making it very likely to currently be… here. Incubating. Right now.”

“Yes,” Organa says, mouth folding into a frown.

“I need you to find some sort of container,” Hux says, glancing at the photos again and moving the scalpel a few centimeters further up until it’s right over the same place on the other victims and marking with a shallow cut. He hopes it’s is actually incubating, and not… alert. “Ask one of the others if you have trouble – they’re working to solve some _actual_ murder, I believe.”

A markedly reluctant noise squeezes itself out of Organa’s throat, “Alright.”

Organa takes a breath and drifts backward, looking around before grabbing a random organ pan from just behind the other autopsy table. He looks back to Hux, raising a brow, leading Hux to shrug like he doesn’t know fully that Mitaka is going to turn around with a pair of kidneys sometime in the next ten minutes.

“Grab a mask and some gloves,” Hux says, gesturing with his chin toward the containers handily labeled for sterile equipment. He busies his own hands with laying out his supplies in different order for the change in procedure, though not quite sure what he’ll need – he hasn’t been tasked with dissecting a parasite since medical school.

Organa glances between Hux and the body, narrowing his eyes at the marked off area on the abdomen with visible discontent. He looks back up with a long exhale, shaking his head, “I’m not qualified.”

“You’re not _qualified_ to hold an object roughly twelve inches in diameter and three inches deep?” Hux says, letting a skeptical smirk cross his face as he slowly raises a brow, “I may be forced to report that, Special Agent. ”

Organa rolls his eyes, exhaling a heavy sigh and taking two steps to the left, grabbing at the supplies with a petulant frown. He opens the glasses packet, folding the pair open with an audible crack of plastic, and shoves them on with a single hand. “ _Happy_?”

“Ecstatic,” Hux says, lowering his tone with condescension. He turns back toward the body, gesturing just next to his elbow, “Just hold the pan here.”

“Could you glean anything from the reports,” Organa mutters, taking a short breath, “About what it was?”

“I am not a parasitologist, Agent Organa,” Hux says, pulling his mask back up over his mouth and leaning forward; he gently traces the marked area with the point before exhaling slowly, “We’ll soon both find out.”

Organa clears his throat in vague response, hesitantly moving forward another step as the scalpel sinks easily into the flesh. The pan has fallen somewhere near his waist, the shape of it just barely perceptible against Hux’s side and the grip of it going noticeably more lax as the moments wear on.

“It will take a while to remove the other organs and access the pancreas,” Hux says, slowly widening the incision. He tries to ignore the voice at the back of his own mind, getting louder and louder about abandoning the preliminary examination for little more than curiosity. “Try not to pass out until then.”

“I’m not going to pass out,” Organa snaps, his tone practically a definition of indignation, to be found conveniently as a side note to his petulance. “Did you not see the photos from the other cases?”

“I did, and I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Hux says, carefully feeling along the edges of the stomach; he’ll have to examine the contents with a sharper eye later and compare with said files, if just to ensure he never ingests anything similar. “Most parasites have difficulty surviving without the host.”

Organa answers with a scoff. “Sure.”

“There is definitely something odd here,” Hux says, curling his fingers harder into a foreign object that seems to be wedged into the space between the stomach and the organs below; it’s bulbous, seemingly quite long, and much, much warmer than anything should be inside of a dead body.

The realization he should have had the body _scanned_ prior to actually cutting into it nearly makes him back off completely, but he can’t just stop with Organa literally hovering at his side. It’s clearly gone too far already, wrists deep into some poor woman, and how would it look to Unamo and Mitaka if he insisted that for his first official case?

“What is it?” Organa asks, lowering his voice almost as if he’s wary it might startle something.

“I would assume the parasite,” Hux says, humming something forcefully absent-minded as he tries to get a better hold on the shape. He shoves his other hand in further with the scalpel, careful of the blade against the gallbladder, and parts the organs with far less gentleness than strictly recommended at the same moment he pulls at this most peculiar shape.

The creature that twists against the knife is all at once impossible and literally made of nightmares, pale and wriggling, eyeless and subsequently blind as it reaches out toward Hux’s hand with a quick, if clumsy roll of its slimy form. He darts back, dropping the scalpel to the ground with a loud clink and snatching at Organa’s jacketed shoulder, deep-rooted training at the forefront of his addled mind insisting he pull his allies toward the exits and away from the… the… _enemy_ trying to kill them.

“Back up, back up,” Hux orders, feeling his voice drop into a tone he hasn’t had need to use in months.

Organa seems to feel the same instinctual panic at the unknown, tripping over his non-regulation boots in similar haste to get to the door. “F- _fuck._ No.”

The brightly-lit hall outside the office, with its meters of unevenly painted cinderblock and vague scent of disinfectants, has never been so welcoming. Hux takes a few deep breaths that seem to go all the way to his stomach, walking back and forth the short width of the hall and counting tiles in threes. His mind just can’t seem to catch up with the experience he’s just suffered, seeing something so large and so utterly revolting.

“Wait,” Organa murmurs, glancing sideways with a pinch between his brows.

Hux frowns in response, but a choked scream from the lab distracts from that particular mystery. He steps hastily out of the doorway just as it swings open, Unamo skittering across the dirty linoleum on squeaking sneakers, then peeks in the door behind her when it remains clear, eyes widening at the sight of Mitaka cowering with his fists up over his eyes.

“Oh, Doph,” Unamo mutters from behind Hux, her voice winding into a sigh.

The pathetic display seems to provoke something more than pity in Organa, who takes a few long strides to outright grab Mitaka by the back of his collar and practically pick him straight up, hauling him toward the door, then dropping him roughly just outside the jamb. His chest heaves as he straightens his back, running both hands through mussed hair with a single long, low exhale.

Hux finds himself abruptly transfixed on the sight, watching tiny shifts of curls, a quirk of wide frown, spasms of muscle beneath a dark jumper hiding remarkably little. He glances away with a slow breath, swallowing; of course, his libido chooses _now_ to suddenly reappear after almost a year of general disinterest – at the worst possible time and fixed on the worst possible person.

A quiet gasp blessedly sidetracks the misfortune, and Hux turns fully on his heel, easily forcing a frown onto his face. “Dr. Unamo?”

“Did you _see_ that?” Unamo asks, raising her head, eyes wide and almost crazed, with a marked flush to her normal pallor. “He just picked Mitaka up by the scruff. Like he was a puppy.”

Hux rolls his eyes, looking away again with hopes to deter the idea that he might be in a _moderately_ similar state. He inadvertently catches the spectacle of Organa shoving away a bright-eyed Mitaka, and… well, perhaps the metaphor isn't completely unjustified. It doesn’t excuse the fact that all of them should be _far_ more concerned with the horror in the lab rather than pointless displays of athleticism. He’s not sure how he’s going to be able to go in that room again, let alone finish the autopsy before day’s end.

“We need to capture it,” Organa announces, swiftly losing any impressions of allure as he practically steps over Unamo in bid to shove his opinions at Hux. “Won’t it die outside of the body?”

Hux scoffs hard, crossing his arms in the same instant.  “We don’t need it _alive_ , you fool.”

“Yes, we do,” Organa says, his hands balling into fists at his sides.

“ _No_ ,” Hux says, lowering his voice into a snarl. “We _don’t_.”

“You knew it was there?!” Unamo demands, her tone bordering on outright earsplitting in the echoing hall.

“What’s this? Looks like a party,” a cheery voice says from the end of the hall, heralding Poe Dameron arriving just on time to make the afternoon worse. “Everything okay?”

“Perfectly fine,” Hux says, hearing his voice grow even more curt, notably enough that even Organa sends him a curious look. He gestures with his chin in the direction Dameron just came, “Jog on.”

Dameron leans back in exaggerated offense, then drops the act in the next instant and simply sends a smirk sideways, shaking his head as he shoves at the lab doors. “You’ve got such a stick up your ass, man.”

“Um, Dr. Dameron, actually, you don’t…” Mitaka trails off, dropping the hand he had lifted to no avail. He sighs heavily once Dameron disappears beyond the jamb, shoulders falling with visible surrender to the entire situation.

A choked, gurgle of a shout comes only moments later, Dameron backing out of the lab and into the hall with wide eyes. He turns around, eyes screwed shut with visible agony, “Why is there a _xenomorph_ in there?”

“It is for a case,” Hux says, pressing his lips into a line and determined to keep his voice level.

Dameron shakes his head, mouth still curled in disgust and his back jammed to the door. He opens his eyes with a start, blinking at the light, then summarily nods in a single, sweeping motion to look at Organa. “This is your fault, isn’t it?”

The question apparently has meaning unto itself, with Organa taking a deep, startled breath, eyes flickering to Hux before his jaw tenses and hands tighten at his sides; he looks down in the next moment to the dingy floor, a certain curl of self-reproach at his lips. He seems hardly the unrestrained creature that only minutes ago Hux had felt some flicker of errant attraction.

Hux glances between the equally awkward Unamo and Mitaka, then looks back to Dameron with a sigh, watching him peek back into the lab through the window. “Get out, Dameron. Run back to the Smithsonian.”

Dameron spins around on a heel, one hand going to his hips, “I work here, too.”

“Hardly,” Hux says, lifting his chin and sneering, finally realizing an outlet for all the uselessness he’s felt in the past ten minutes. “State a legitimate reason for your presence here, or exit the grounds under threat of arrest and detention.”

Dameron holds the stare for a long few seconds, then actually rolls his eyes. “I’m consulting with a cold-case, dead-eye. Anyway, I heard down the grapevine that you’ve been put in the field – it’s why I thought it was safe to come down here.”

Hux can hear the sound of his own teeth grinding at the repulsive nickname, an impulse going through him to physically deal a similar blow, but he manages to reduce it to a slow inhale. “If the case is already cold, then I’m sure a few more hours won’t be too catastrophic.”

Dameron leans back on his heels, glancing again between the doors and Hux with evident disbelief, “Seriously? That’s a pretty callous thing to say.”

“I couldn’t care less,” Hux says, taking a deep breath and straightening his back, carefully looking over Dameron’s head. “We’re dealing with something of an incident.”

Dameron is silent for a long moment, then tips his head with a low hum, a few curls of his hair intruding just barely in Hux’s carefully held line of sight. “Right.”

“Um,” Mitaka intones, drawing the collective attention of the hall with a hesitant clearing of his throat. “I think it’s dead, anyway.”

Organa actually gives a ludicrous little gasp, pushing forward and shoving in between Mitaka and Dameron, peering into the window with a deep scowl slowly etching its way onto his face. He shoves open the door after only a few seconds, rushing in again for a second time with little care for self-preservation.

Hux waits a few moments before following, exhaling slowly and ignoring the trio of stares from the

“It’s dead,” Organa says, staring down at the limp organism collapsed across the body’s open side. 

“The thing was wriggling just a few moments ago,” Dameron says, peering down with a narrow stare. He actually reaches forward, ghosting his hand just over the organism’s relative head. “I’m going to have nightmares for a week.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why did he keep calling you ‘dead-eye’?” Organa asks, grabbing at one of the shots and downing it with a repulsive gulp. “Why do you hate it?”
> 
> “I don’t hate it,” Hux says, taking a shotglass of his own and looking at the unsteady line of crème across the top; the unsettling tentacle-like protrusions to the bottom of the glass. A single one shouldn’t be too bad, so he downs it, finding it surprisingly agreeable despite appearance. “It’s inaccurate. I’m a doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI! I didn't expect to get more done for this, but I'm managing to fill out some stuff lol.
> 
> I added more than a few tags for this bit, and their backstories are a bit more than the rest and I was not even subtle with them. 
> 
> Also, I was subtle about it before, but the Resistance is like the show Bones, kind of. I do not remember why...

“Why did he keep calling you ‘dead-eye’?” Organa asks, grabbing at one of the shots and downing it with a repulsive gulp. “Why do you _hate_ it?”

“I don’t hate it,” Hux says, taking a shotglass of his own and looking at the unsteady line of crème across the top; the unsettling tentacle-like protrusions to the bottom of the glass. A single one shouldn’t be too bad, so he downs it, finding it surprisingly agreeable despite appearance. “It’s inaccurate. I’m a _doctor_.”

If one ignores the fact he’s a medical examiner now, anyway, and maybe not even that if Organa gets him fired within the week. Organa seems to know it too, offering a late-night meal and dragging Hux to some kind of upscale diner to ingest greasy foods and novelty cocktails.

It’s entirely unprofessional; he has no idea why he agreed to it except the lingering disbelief of the day. Maybe the CIA is hiring – the work would still involve parasites, but of a comforting non-literal sort.

“I can ask him, if you don’t say,” Organa says, reaching out and lining up Hux’s discarded glass with his own empties. “I’m very good at getting stuff out of people.”

Hux shakes his head and looks to his plate, swirling into a mystery sauce with a single greasy chip; he wonders if Organa knows that another option is asking his own mother. “I met him in Iraq. He was identifying bodies for your lovely military.”

Organa is quiet for a beat, then grunts, “I didn’t know he did that.”

“Yes, Dameron has something of a skill, identifying the dead from little more than _parts_ ,” Hux says, trying to sound derisive of it, but it really is a talent; they might have gotten along if it weren’t for Dameron’s awful personality.

“He’s always been useful to the FBI,” Organa agrees, words amicable enough, despite his tight voice and expression folding into a sneer.

“I can only imagine,” Hux says, lilting his voice upward and hoping that will be enough to change the subject.

Organa totally ignores the opening, instead leaning forward on an elbow. “So if that’s what he did, why were _you_ dead-eye?”

Hux exhales heavily, scratching up under his jaw and slightly regretful that he had already taken that shot. “I had a role, in the military, before I was a doctor.”

“Marksman,” Organa interrupts, quite eager at having the answer, as if he’s on some panel show.

Hux stares back steadily, then rolls his eyes. “Why did you ask?”

“Because that’s in your file, but it’s not _why_ ,” Organa says, tone pitching into an entitled whine.

“Alright, fine,” Hux says, throwing the chip down and running a hand through his hair. He glances to the table, seeing _Organa’s_ remaining shots, and reaches out to slog down the blue one; it’s not hardly as agreeable as the red. “I’m only saying this because we’re drinking, and I expect you to summarily _forget it_ for the sake of national security.”

“Yes,” Organa agrees, a little too readily by his hurried nod and further lean forward, until barely inches away.

“Two years ago, I was a doctor in Syria,” Hux starts, choosing not to shift away and keep his voice low, ignoring the untimely thought that Organa has rather lovely eyes. “I was – ”

“You said Iraq,” Organa says, tone dropping and a troubled pursing at his mouth.

“I lied,” Hux snaps, a little irritated that it has to be said, “Are you going to keep interrupting?”

Organa rolls his lips together, glancing down and then back up. “…No.”

“I was patching up soldiers and civilians alike, and intelligence came in about a man building a bomb,” Hux says, ignoring the troublesome flickers of memory between rustling paperwork and reluctant commanders, to tears and rubble; all of it his fault. It’s not the time for it, and he swallows it back as he has always done. “He could be seen just through a window from a roof two blocks over, and he hadn’t left the apartment for an entire week. They decided they could shoot him, but there weren’t any snipers with the skill to handle it in the area, so they decided to use _me_.”

“The shot was an easy one, close range, good angle, no wind…” Hux pauses, starting back at a sudden flicker in the corner of his eye, nebulous yet solid enough to catch attention. He peeks sideways, only to find that what set him off was his own _reflection_ in the bloody stupid diner bar. “I don’t believe I have the clearance to tell you this, actually.”

Organa just widens his eyes even further, exacerbating their already doe-like state.

Hux grimaces some, looking over his plate and lifting a hand, pressing his forehead into a cradled palm to deter any more threatening reflections. “The shot was perfect. He wasn’t moving particularly much, so I took him through the temple… and out the other side, right into a veritable ton of unstable material. The entire building and half the one next to it exploded, injuring a forty-seven and killing twelve, including an American squad placed in the alley in case I had missed.”

Organa‘s mouth opens, expression twisting like he’s about to interrupt again – probably, because it isn’t in Hux’s file. But of course it isn’t.

“If it hadn’t been a secret operation, I would’ve been court-martialed; my commanding officer jailed,” Hux says, before he can get any more questions, “Instead, I was only ordered to treat the people I had injured, and it was officially reported to be the bomber’s own fault.

“Dameron came in the next day for your people.” Hux picks the chip back up and a few others, smearing them in the mystery sauce, then pausing for a few moments to eat them. “Of course, he came up with a cheery little nickname.”

Organa is quiet for a long few seconds, eyes narrow and intense, then slowly shakes his head. “That’s still not why.”

“You cannot possibly know that,” Hux says, irritated that Organa can't just be happy with what he's got - he's already heard more than anyone else ever will _._

“I do,” Organa says, his confidence more frustrating than the statement. “Your ability to lie fails when you’re drunk.”

“Oh, you think you’ve gotten me drunk?”

“You could pretend?” Organa says, raising his brows with an odd hopeful manner. He shrugs, glancing sideways with a low exhale, “I know that’s not it. You were put with me for a reason.”

“Fine,” Hux mutters, exhaling through his nose and swallowing tightly, unsure why he’s being so forthcoming; he could blame the drink, though he’s had little more than few ounces.  “During the cleanup, a young mother approached me when I was with the civilians.”

Organa frowns immediately, clearly thinking he’s about to be given more of the run-around.

“She had a gash on her forehead and pulled me away while I was trying to treat it, insisting I _must_ find her children. I felt… guilty, naturally, and followed to a collapsed pile of stone near the back of the decimated building,” Hux says, pausing for a moment and blinking away the worst of persistent images. He tips one of the empty shot glasses back and forth, clearing his throat. “I could hear them in there, yelling for help, so I radio’d over a few other soldiers and we dug them out.”

“So?” Organa prompts, shifting his giant body and near upending the entirety of both their meals onto Hux’s lap when it rocks the table.

Hux lowers his forehead into his palms with a low breath, wincing at the bright red remnants of ketchup on his plate. “And the body of the mother was with them.”

Organa sits up, eyes going wide and thrilled. “A ghost!”

“No, no,” Hux says, waving a finger, and feeling very tempted to reach out and push at Ren across the table. “A _hallucination_. From guilt and _stress_.”

“How did he – Dameron know?” Organa asks, still lit up, gesturing rapidly and intently, his curled fingers brushing up against Hux’s hand. “About it, I mean.”

Hux tries to ignore how the back of his hand as started to tingle, grabbing another cold chip and shoving it in his mouth. “The whole medical tent witnessed it – my talking to the _air_ – and a few followed in curiosity to the rubble. Him among them. He believes the insult to be a clever double-entendre.”

Organa finally leans back into his booth, appearing far too excited. “So you’re psychic.”

“No,” Hux snaps, angry that Organa is proceeding to neglect everything Hux has told himself over the past years. “Psychics don’t exist.”

Organa gestures a vague dismissal, practiced as he is at ignoring sense.

“The Director hinted at something similar happening to you,” Hux says, now determined to get reprisal – he won’t let Organa get away with nothing after forcing him to recount his worst memory. “I deserve that story.”

Organa keeps quiet for actual minutes, confident posture slowly drooping. “It wasn’t similar.”

“Then it wasn’t similar,” Hux allows, refusing to regret asking the question. It’s probably private, but so was his, and it’ll help him get a better handle on this madman who catches madmen. “But I still gave you mine, now tell me yours.”

Organa stretches against the table, bench creaking and arms straight out in front of him. “There was a man, a professor, at the school I went to in Massachusetts,” he starts, voice immediately lower and discomfort almost palpable. “It was the… _fourth_ one I’d been sent to, and I won a medal for rowing there, which was a first. And last.

“The professor told me things I wanted to hear,” Organa continues, speaking steadily, his previous emotive behavior fading away until his voice is dull. “About being special, being capable of great things, surpassing my mother – the shit teenagers always think they can accomplish.”

Hux drags his teeth over his lower lip, nodding carefully and ignoring the discomforting crawl of inevitability at the back of his neck. He remembers with some unease that Ren excelled in BAU, his file lauding his skill in _victimology_ as genius, and tries not to think about the sort of crimes that serial killers tend to agonize upon their victims; at least, not until Ren out and out says it.

 “I…” Organa exhales, voice dropping almost a to whisper, “I helped him murder two of my classmates.”

Hux blinks and leans back in his seat, somehow both relieved and utterly horrified; technically, he was right _and_ wrong. “I’m sorry?”

“That’s on record, not a secret,” Ren says, doing a fair impression of seeking eye contact, except how he’s focused just over Hux’s shoulder. “I haven’t made you an accessory. Yet.”

“A relief,” Hux says, mostly out of pity at the weak attempt at a joke.

“He pitted us against each other in class at first, then during tutoring, watched us fight for his favor,” Organa says, chewing at the inside of his lip. He looks down at the table, fingers tapping at the edge of his plate. “Somewhere just before the end of spring term… I guess, we all went missing.

“I don’t remember much any of it, still…” He trails off, quiet for seconds, then tips his head to the other side with a marked crack of his spine. “I woke up in the dark, my friends – they were both lying just… so still at the other corners of this squat little cave that smelled like wet dirt – I remember that I could feel roots scratching my head, the floor damp under my bare feet. But the professor, he was just standing there near some rocks and he told me... He congratulated me – Because I had won.”

“Won,” Hux repeats, voice faint even to his own ears.

“It can’t have been much of a surprise to him. Annette probably only 5’1, Caleb was near my height, but he was… more studious,” Ren pauses, clearly caught in some thought as he blinks a few times too many at the messy remains of his burger. He takes a sudden breath long after the silence has grown uncomfortable, shaking is head, “I mean, I had a lot of injuries, a broken hand and a sprained ankle, scratches all over, so they tried, but… I was bigger. I’m always bigger.”

“He had you all _fight –_ like the bloody Hunger Games?” Hux asks, blinking a few times in disbelief. He can hardly believe what Ren is confessing; it sounds like a primetime drama.

“I remember, he… He reached up and touched my face, then he left, and… Hours later, it must have been, the cops showed up,” Ren continues, his gaze blank and focused again just over Hux’s shoulder, clearly caught up in the memory. “We’d been missing three days, and… and they knew everything already, because Sn – the professor had called them. He had _called_ them and _explained_ exactly what happened. He told them where to find us; what medical I needed; the fact I’d be confused.”

Hux glances across Organa’s avoidant expression, absorbing the words slower, and is disconcerted by the implication this professor had been so convinced in his ability to escape this monstrous act to call the authorities himself. 

“They never found him, but my mother got the case against me expunged,” Organa says, chewing on his lips. “Obviously.”

“I can tell that much, yes,” Hux agrees, his hand feeling oddly heavy when he offers a simple gesture to convey the space between them.

“I don’t remember most of the entire year,” Organa says, his dark lashes briefly flickering when he looks to Hux’s hand, then intently back to the middle distance. “A coping mechanism, I was told – I _believed_.”

Hux frowns slightly at the clarification, pulling his hand backward into his middle, and realizes with a sinking feeling that Ren still hasn’t explained where it becomes more X-file than simple human evil.

“Four months ago, he reappeared,” Organa says, his stony expression starting to break, mouth twisting into a snarl and brows furrowing together while his breath gets heavy. He shakes his head, looking up and catching Hux’s eyes firm now, unwavering, “It was all exactly the same fucking thing, right down to the kid barely remembering _months._ It was a surprise – the team had gone in thinking it was just another sick fuck. _”_

Hux nods slightly, unsure how else to react. 

“I tried to talk to the survivor, but…” Organa tips his head, visibly swallowing while his eyes dart away again, hands twisting together and fingers digging into the spaces between knuckles. “But I think he saw I was just as fucked up about it. He, uh… He did what I… He didn’t make it through the week before they found him.”

Hux doesn’t quite understand at first, almost makes the mistake of asking, but then the words run through his head on loop: didn’t make it; found him. And Organa… He sounds more empathetic about it than anything.

“I forced myself to look into similar cases after that,” Organa says, clearing his throat at such volume that the sleepy waiter startles against the register. “It’s happened every fifteen years for the last sixty. But I’m the only one who… Who’s got through it.”

Hux nods slow, trying to seem understanding, and hoping it hides his mounting shame. His story isn’t anything like this – it wasn’t so private, or deeply embedded into him. He was the evil in his own story, proceeding into guilty delusion, while Organa was nearly the opposite. He never should’ve asked to hear this, especially having known Organa only _days_.

“And now… I know it wasn’t just me? I’m going to find him,” Organa says, his tone harsh now and jaw visibly working a tic. “I don’t give a fuck if he’s in a nursing home, or in a wheelchair, or whatever – I’m going to find him and I’m going to find out what he did to me.”

“Then kill him,” Hux adds, mostly because it seems the obvious conclusion, then regretting it only for being rather bloodthirsty. It’s not the sort of thing one generally admits being on a first… work dinner, though he’s already confessed to taking out two buildings and murdering a dozen within.

Organa glances up with a blink, brow furrowing and coming out of the story with a start.

Hux manages to look back steadily, refusing to take it back. “You’re not the only one with privy into the human mind.”

Organa acknowledges that with a sideways nod and a thoughtful tilt to his mouth, as he regards Hux. Perhaps, they’ll get along better than expected for the next month, though… It’s a peculiar thing on which to find common ground.

“Is that how you found this case?” Hux asks, changing the subject and hoping Organa will follow along this time, though perhaps the earlier attempt had been too subtle. “With the _parasite_. Looking through old files.”

Organa gestures in acknowledgement, hand turning upward. “I maybe had the first three out already.”

“You were waiting,” Hux realizes, because if what the files had said were true, which he still finds unlikely, then this creature had a very predictable timeline. And Organa had just _sat_ on it. “Couldn’t you have said something _before_ the victim died?”

“No one knows what it is,” Organa snaps, leaning forward over the table again but far less friendly about it, now bearing a snarl across his mouth. “The victim fits a profile that is too broad to track in a city this size – only similar in looks, and even then, nothing special.”

“How kind of you,” Hux says flatly, tempted to mention that Organa himself could fit the profile with a few tweaks.

“I’m going to get footage of her scene tomorrow,” Organa grumbles, reaching out and tapping at his neat line of shotglasses, now shoving them into disorder with a clink against Hux’s plate. “Which we didn’t have before. But I think it’s like alien.”

Hux stares for a beat, wishing he could be surprised. “…An alien.”

“ _No_ ,” Organa says, far too patronizing for a man who collects and displays such memorabilia in his _office_. He pauses a second later, then seems to, predictably, rescind his answer. “Maybe. I mean – ” He gestures aggressively, leaning back in his bench rather than forward, preventing a repeat of brushing Hux across the knuckles. “The unsub, or… or predator? Uses the body to incubate its young. Like _Alien_.”

“Yet is human enough to have a type,” Hux says, reluctantly playing into the delusion, though as a more rational, if ultimately more horrifying option: “It could be generations of a family, or some manner of fringe religion, seeking out hosts for a ceremonial reason.”

Organa is quiet for a few seconds, tracing at his mouth with a thumb in thought, then ultimately agrees with a sullen grimace.

“Dreadful,” Hux mutters, forcing himself to look away from Organa’s shameless oral fixation.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “See,” Organa says, tugging at Hux’s sleeve like an oversize child, clearly urging him to bend down to his level at the screen.
> 
> “Organa, this is pointless,” Hux says, glancing between the screen and the recorded time stamp, seeing no movement or so much as a hint of life anywhere, even of a rat; he doesn’t even see the victim, who must have been present at some time. “There’s nothing here.”

“See,” Organa says, tugging at Hux’s sleeve like an oversize child, clearly urging him to bend down to his level at the screen.

“Organa, this is pointless,” Hux says, glancing between the screen and the recorded time stamp, seeing no movement or so much as a hint of life anywhere, even of a rat; he doesn’t even see the _victim_ , who must have been present at _some_ time. “There’s nothing here.”

Organa exhales a veritable growl, playing through a different part of the video and then narrowing to parameters that seem to select a corner of the dark, fusty alley. “Just call me Ren,” he mutters, tapping hard at the keyboard, “Organa is my mother.”

Hux blinks and straightens up, only vaguely surprised at the appeal to crumble professionalism even further. “I don’t want you calling me Armitage.”

“I won’t,” Ren says, looking up from his screen with an oddly disarming peek from under his lashes. “You don’t want anyone to call you that.”

Hux narrows his eyes, then looks back to the screen with a sharp clear if his throat. “I don’t appreciate the profiling.”

Ren exhales something that might be a laugh. “ _Profiling_?”

“Just continue with your stupid shadow,” Hux says, shifting on his feet and peeking sideways for a moment; his desk still hasn’t been installed and he doesn’t even have a _chair_. He wonders if he’s going to be stuck shuffling back and forth between the ME and here until the month is up.

“It’s not a shadow,” Ren says, pausing the video and pointing aggressively at the screen with a pair of fingers. “It’s obviously a _shape_.”

“Equally vague,” Hux says flatly, leaning into the screen on his own accord this time, though he can still discern little more than blending pixels of grey. He shoos Ren’s hands off the keyboard, taking it and tabbing a few times until he’s found the panel to brighten the image, but it only pixelates further into splotches.  

“Damn it,” Ren says, selecting another option that Hux doesn’t recognize, the icon made of dots, and suddenly the footage is a modern art piece. “ _Fuck_.”

Hux rolls his lips between his teeth, trying very hard not to find Ren’s behavior entertaining.

“Fine,” Ren snaps, standing abruptly from his chair, kicking his chair into a file cabinet and knocking his elbow straight into Hux’s ribs.

Hux bites down on his lip in reflex, internalizing a wheeze; good lord, his partner is a bull.

Ren offers a choked inhale at his clumsy assault, reaching out with open hands but not quite touching. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Hux says quietly, taking a deep breath and not finding it overly painful, so he’s only been a bit winded. He doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact Ren has that sort of strength on accident, or the fact that Hux has gotten so soft he can’t simply absorb it.

“Do you, uh,” Ren chews on his lips a few seconds, hunching his shoulders and elbows inward like an awkward bird, “Want to just go down there?”

“Is it still cordoned?” Hux asks, slowly dropping his hand from his sternum to a loose fist at his side. He’s going to be so irritated if he gets a bruise.

Ren shrugs and shifts deliberately, projecting his movements far too exaggeratedly, rather than simply asking Hux to move a few steps back. He kneels at his bag once on the other side of the desk, going through a few of the pockets before zipping it all up and throwing it over his bag. “Still might be good to see.”

Hux takes his jacket from the unofficial hook of the sharp edge of a shelf, following Ren with some reluctance to the lifts. “I have to be back to assist Unamo at 3.”

“Why?” Ren’s expression twists, glancing over as they’re forced to pause in front of the doors. “That’s not your department.”

“I’m not going to let my skills atrophy,” Hux says flatly, staring back hard and taking some gratification in the way Ren winces to the ground. “To instead go around chasing shadows with you.”

“Shape,” Ren mutters, slinking in the door once the ding announces its arrival.

“Oh, quit pouting,” Hux says stepping in after and pressing the number for the level that will lead them to the bridge over the garage. “We can be back before an hour if all we’re doing is looking at an alley.”

“I’m not pouting,” Ren snarls, shoulders rolling back in offense; he’s such a spectacle of tells.

“That’s all you do,” Hux says, sneering slightly at Ren’s profile before looking back forward when the door dings open.

He comes close to rolling his eyes when Ren takes a wide step to beat him to the driver side of the sedan, practically darting for the door. It would be a lie to say he hadn’t thought about taking the keys after the show Ren had made on their dinner the night before, driving across town like the road was a game, but he’s not _said_ anything. Yet.

Ren clears his throat just as he turns the car out of the parking garage, voice low and dry. “Did you want to drive?”

Hux glances over, briefly catching Ren’s smug expression with his own narrow look before turning back to the window.

“How about coffee?”

Hux only just reins the first impulse to ask if that’s some attempt to manipulate, or apologize. “Alright.”

Ren takes the next street without much more warning, switching lanes mid-turn and evidently deaf to the complaints of no less than three drivers. The worst thing about Ren’s driving is that he doesn’t oversteer or nervously brake, keeps to his mirrors and always slips into lanes with just enough space, which means he’s actually quite good at it, but rather than driving sensibly, he _chooses_ to be a maniac.

Hux leans forward when Ren comes to a stop, curious when, instead of a Starbucks, they’ve stopped in front of an actual café centered between a Chinese bakery and a sporting shop. He peeks in the darkened windows, finding it to be relatively well-patroned, going by the laptop and tablet screens he can see glaring back.

“It’s pretty good,” Ren says, tapping at the ignition and opening his door, voice echoing as he steps outside. “They have a cold brew they put in the iced coffee, and different flavors of whip.”

“Posh, then,” Hux says, shutting his own door and annoyed to find himself glancing down while Ren pulls at the sleeves of his jumper.

“Yeah,” Ren says, ostensibly unaware of Hux’s minor distraction, reaching out with his now-exposed arm, muscle flexing as his hand wraps around the handle. “I mean. I think so?”

Hux looks up to Ren’s face, quirking an eyebrow, then steps in the open space that Ren is evidently leaving for him to go in ahead, ignoring a brush of heat across his cheeks. He wishes Ren would wear a proper suit, making him shapeless and ugly like the rest of the bureau. He glances briefly across the room, finding the café to be some manner of pseudo-mod, with white tables and a shiny glass case of pastries. “Seems a bit, yes.”

“Oh, hi,” the barista greets, a pleasant, not-too-wide smile across her face. She plucks just slightly at her shirt, emphasizing the low collar, and lean forward over the counter with eyes only for Ren. “Welcome to Cloud City, what can I get you?”

“Uh,” Ren intones, oddly choosing now to glance at Hux, lips rolling against his teeth. “Where’s Lando?”

The barista wilts slightly and gestures backward to an open door. “In the kitchen?”

“Oh,” Ren mutters, taking a deep breath and idly tapping at a stack of cards on the counter. “I’ll have an iced latte with caramel whip. What do you want? Hux.”

Hux smothers a sigh when the barista looks to him with a startled blink, as if she’s only just noticed he was present. “An americano is fine.”

Ren scoffs, as if somehow offended, “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Hux says flatly, glancing over to Ren and narrowing his eyes, “An _americano_.”

“Any milk?” The barista asks, her voice raising just slightly in pitch, marker scratching as it writes on a plastic cup, then paper. “Sugar?”

“No,” Hux says, shaking his head shortly and paying no attention to a murmured insult from his left; he’s  _fairly_ certain Ren just called him boring. He hesitates a moment before reaching backward, taking out his card and shooing Ren’s hand away when he tries to snatch it.

“Wait,” Ren says, but Hux shoves him with his hip to the other end of the espresso bar. “I was going to pay.”

“I’m aware,” Hux says, refusing to look over while his card is wrung up, hiding the smirk he feels across his mouth.

The barista doesn’t quite pause making eyes, but they do their job perfectly all the same, and Hux is startled to find the simple coffee more nutty than bitter. He looks over to mention it, only to catch Ren lifting the straw from his own cup to lick down the length of it for cream, and immediately looks back to his own drink with a sharp inhale.

“Good, right?” Ren says, stepping back outside and words slightly muffled by the straw.

“Passable,” Hux mutters, dropping into the passenger seat and risking another glance over, but he finds his eyes drawn to something other than Ren’s lack of awareness, instead a neat line of numbers standing stark against the pale color of the coffee, beneath them an underlined _Bridgette_.

“I think I’ve actually found someone more unprofessional than you,” he says, pointing out the number if just to be polite, as Ren _had_ implied he comes here often, and perhaps she was why.

Ren blinks and turns the cup, expression curious before he proceeds to grimace, shoving it into the holder. “Oh.”

“But not too bad looking,” Hux says, sternly ignoring a sudden prickle of unrest bursting just beneath his sternum; a tightening at the base of his throat. His voice emerges far lower than he plans it to on his next words, all the same. “Personable. Though that was probably for the tip.”

Ren shrugs, putting the car in drive with a stiff yank on the shifter. “Yeah.”

Hux reaches out and taps the GPS screen, pretending that the mood hasn’t become awkward, as any other time it may have been more taunting – or, well, with any other person. He shouldn’t be so irked at someone hitting on his partner, especially when he’s had him only barely a week. And they weren’t that sort of partner.

He pulls out his phone for an address and sees that Ren must have some idea already of how to get where they’re going. The car is already pointed toward the part of the city they need to be in, whipping through traffic, though his lax driving posture has stiffened a bit, as if he’s less eager.

Hux leans back after the turn-by-turn has started, watching the numbers tick down and wishing there was more distraction. He could probably find work on his phone, emails at the least, but most of what he needs done is reports and he’s not a great fan of working on a mobile screen.

He takes another sip of the drink and looks to the window, watching streets he doesn’t recognize pass by. He’s been in the city for almost a year now, but seen so little of it, always stuck in the morgue for the better part of his time. And now a _basement_.

“Not really my type,” Ren says, picking up the cup as he slows to a stop at a light, now only two streets away from the badly lit alley.

Hux tries not to hear weight in those words. “Ah.”

“You can have it,” Ren says, tipping the coffee sideways and showing off the number.

“No, thank you,” Hux says sharply, realizing it had been a joke when Ren gives that now-familiar twitching smirk. He looks back through the windscreen, seeing the alley just ahead according to the GPS. “I’m not interested, either, not to mention I’m sure that’s _quite_ rude.”

Ren hums a short, pitchy agreement, as he pulls the car into the alley, or at least as far as he can when a pair of raccoons refuse to move away from the bumper.

“No longer cordoned,” Hux says, unbuckling his belt with a sigh.

“No,” Ren mutters, opening his door and shouting nonsense at the raccoons, who finally scuttle off down under the nearby barrier fence.

“And picked clean,” Hux says, looking down the alley from his open door; it looks relatively tidy for the area, swept and mostly empty of trash.

Ren walks further down the alley, kneeling down in the corner that matches relatively well to the crime scene photos. “I wonder if it’s why the body was found so quickly,” he says, reaching out at some of the scraps of paper that might have once been wrappers or takeaway containers “The other victims were found buried in litter.”

Hux finds his eyes drawn to a door, nearly blending into the black paint of the alleyway walls, and startles slightly when the undeniable shape of a hand comes and goes from the edge of the jam. He scowls some, looking over to Ren still kneeling and studying garbage, and marches over to the door, only to find it sealed closed and no persons certainly getting through it. He takes an unsteady breath, then shakes his head. “Ren.”

“What?”

“Has anyone checked the buildings?” Hux asks, taking a step back and glancing to each of the windows on the side, finding them all boarded up or broken. “They look abandoned, but there’s likely _someone_ inside.”

“Far as I know,” Ren pauses, his shoes scraping against the paved ground when he presumably moves to stand. “Metro made note that the fire exits were locked and labeled both uninhabited.”

Hux looks over with narrow glare. “Really?”

“They didn’t even do the bloodwork,” Ren says, shrugging with a single shoulder and a glare of his own, though it’s directed down the alley toward the street. “The file was what we saw. Surprised they even tried.”

Hux glances down the same direction, already irritated at himself for entertaining Ren’s delusions and now his own. “If you were serious about that theory – ”

“I am,” Ren interrupts, maddeningly straightforward.

“If you _were_ ,” Hux repeats, because he’s only going to acknowledge any of this in one way. “And you truly believed the killer was using victim’s body to incubate, wouldn’t you at least hypothesize that they’d keep the body close?”

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then tilts his head with a thoughtful hum. “I am noticing that you’re talking about this as if I came up with it to distance yourself from _your_ own hypothesis.”

“Shut up,” Hux says, pressing his tongue to the backs of his teeth.

Ren tilts his head with a twisting sort of smile, looking up the side of the building next to them. “But. Yes. If it were human enough.”

Hux looks to the door again, and the welded bolts keeping it shut. “We’ll have to go around the front.”

Ren grunts his agreement and then he’s walking without more warning, presumably straight for the front door.

Hux catches up and nearly reaches out to grab Ren, but stops himself to merely hover over a bicep before pulling his hand back. “Could you avoid mentioning your theory?”

Ren sighs heavily, glancing back with an expression like the simple request pains him. 

“The staff knowing about this is one thing, but the general public?” Hux says, redirecting his hovering hand to gesture at the street. “We don’t need that sort of press.”

“Fine,” Ren says, taking the last few stairs up to the entrance with a marked weight in his step.

Hux follows up the stoop and settles in next to Ren just as he starts to bang on the door with the broad side of a hand. Hux frowns some and looks around for a bell, but doesn’t find even a hint of a buzzer – odd, as a building of this size should have multiple tenants, at least when it had them. 

“Just a moment,” a voice calls, soon followed by the clattering noise of heavy locks. A pair of dark eyes peek through a narrow space when the door opens, still held by a chain, then a moment later it’s pulled and the door opened to reveal a short, thin white man in a wooly sweater.

“Hello. We’re with the FBI," Ren says, taking on an odd, soft tone, which must be his ‘friendly for witnesses’ voice; it’s so entirely unlike his normal voice that Hux almost turns to stare. “We’re investigating a death that happened nearby.”

“Oh,” the man says, nodding slowly and humming in interest, eyes glancing past Ren and Hux to the street. “Alrighty.”

Hux clears his throat when the silence grows awkward on the stoop. “We were wondering if you could spare a few minutes for some questions?”

“Uh- uh, of course, come right on in,” the man says, smiling weakly and stepping back from the door. He turns and leads down a dusty corridor. “Don’t get many visitors.”

Hux looks over to Ren as the man settles them in an off-color kitchen, the whole room stinking of something decidedly rotten. He raises an eyebrow when Ren grimaces back, and rolls his eyes to a boarded window, listening to the man putter around in the other room. He can’t believe no one interviewed this man – it would have been the bare _minimum_ of investigative work, and Hux never would have needed to be stuck in this small space with him.

“I had wondered about that,” the man says, wandering back in with a marked wring of his hands. “All the police just next door. Did you want any coffee?”

Hux stiffens when he catches sight of the hand again, now with its mate and all fingers wrapped tight around the jamb, only to suddenly disappear as if pulled bodily out of sight. He forces himself to look back to the man, swallowing tight and readying his own denial if Ren accepts the offer.

“We’ve got some in the car,” Ren says, mouth folding into a thoroughly fake smile.

“Too bad,” the man says, folding his hands together again and standing a few feet from the table, making no move to sit. “You wanted to ask me... about a death?”

“In a moment,” Hux says, ignoring Ren’s affronted grunt and leaning forward, flinching slightly when the chair creaks and sways underneath him. “I was wondering if you had contact with anyone else in the building? We’ll want to question them as well.”

“Oh, nobody lives here but me,” the man says, offering another weak smile. “Not for years.”

Hux rolls his lips together, feeling a spasm of unease, but there’s not enough reason to voice it. It’s clear the man is squatting, and that is explanation enough for the lack of neighbors, which is nothing too suspicious. He’s simply… trying to survive.

“The case is relating to a woman that was found in the alley,” Ren says, softening his voice even further until it’s almost lilting, even a bit compelling. “Dana Schrute. Did you notice anything odd last week?”

“Sorry,” the man says, plucking at his fingers while looking back at Ren, an apologetic expression crossing his face. “I don’t leave the building much. Sun sensitivity.”

“She was infected by a parasite, when we found her,” Ren says, drawing Hux’s attention away from uncertain feelings and straight into reality. “It died, but you’re very close to where she was. You may be infected.”

“Agent Organa,” Hux says, speaking sternly and satisfied to see Ren’s shoulders tense up under the tone. “Might I remind you it’s still an _open_ investigation.”

“It died,” The man repeats, his eyes dropping to the floor with an odd pinch at his mouth. “Oh.”

Hux glances to Ren, catching his eye just to confirm he's heard the same thing, though Ren's eyes are far too bright for dread. “Is that a problem?”

The man looks up after another pair of silent moments, something about him changed. He no longer seems meek or nervous, staring steadily back at Hux before his eyes darken and his cheeks split open to reveal his mouth goes the _entire_ length of his jaw. It only barely encompasses a horrifying tongue that emerges nothing like a tongue, but far more similar to the creature that was found within the victim, pale and wriggling like an enormous flatworm, but now with uneven, flattened teeth that line up the edge. The man offers a horrible wail out of his misshapen orifice, clearly quite unhappy to have learned the death of his evident progeny.

“Shit,” Ren mumbles, entirely an understatement.

Hux hastily stands from the table and pulls his sidearm, leveling it on the man and knowing he doesn’t have much cause to shoot, but unsure what else to do. He’s got no experience with this – he can’t talk this down, can he? “Stay there,” he says evenly, because it _had_ been talking just like a man, maybe this is… a particularly anomalous mutation.

The man moves, revealing any sort of human eyes and jaw so far receded they may well be gone and roiling, toothed tongue so prominent it might be the true head – no, it _is_ a monster, certainly, and by no simple metaphor. If it is even a little bit like Ren’s been going on about in his mad ideas, it may see them as little more than more prey. It practically confirms the idea with the turn over to Ren, head tilting in attention, then offers a hissing, uneven noise that might be an attempt at words.

“Who are you?” Ren asks, actually moving in front of Hux, his broad shoulders blocking any shot that Hux might take. “Did _you_ murder Dana? Did you murder the rest of the women, too?”

“Ren,” Hux snaps, in disbelief it even has to be said, but, “Stop. Moving.”

“Did you murder _all_ those women?” Ren asks again, getting damnably closer to the creature, taking short, even steps like this thing is nothing more than a mildly unstable suspect.

The creature tilts its head the other way, a far too considering shift in its movement when regards Ren a second time. It almost seems to peek past him to Hux, considering its options, before shifting on one foot and diving with it’s toothy mouth wide open toward the incredibly stupid man trying to block Hux’s shot.

Ren blessedly regains some sentience and starts backward, but he trips, falling backward onto a bent knee with a yelp.

The stumbling blessedly opens up a clear line of sight and Hux shoots in the next instant, finding it more familiar than anything when the creature’s head gets thrown back and it falls to the grungy carpet in a heap. It shudders a few seconds before going still, long enough that it’s almost worrying, and oddly no blood spreads or pools around its body.

“Oh, good lord,” Hux mutters, pulling the gun back into his chest, then exhaling deeply, “Okay. Alright.”

Ren comes to life with a loud breath, scrambling up from the floor, eyes darting across the body before he looks up, seeming far too angry about his _life_ being _saved_. “You shot him.”

“Of course, I did,” Hux hisses, determinedly maintaining eye-contact, refusing to give into the little niggling urge to look back at the tentacle erupting from the body’s far-too-human mouth like a horrifying tongue. “It tried to eat you!”

“I wanted to question him!” Ren shouts, voice echoing across the dingy warehouse while he points downward at his would-be killer.

“I really don’t care!” Hux says, raising his voice to match and in some disbelief that this is even an argument. “It wasn’t a person!”

Ren gestures more cyclically with his entire arm, expression twisting now with a pout. “It was _something_.”

“Murderous!” Hux reminds, mentally tacking on a few other adjectives: aberrant, disgusting, horrifying.

“Predatory,” Ren corrects, because he’s an utter tit.

Hux takes a sharp breath and holsters his pistol, feeling very tempted to take a step forward and bodily shove at Ren’s chest now that his hand is free. “Oh, don’t you _dare_ get semantic on me.”

Ren offers a sneering expression, mocking more than disagreeable. He drops his eyes to the body again, heaving a sigh, and far less uncomfortable than he should be around it. “I guess if it… was reproducing then more must be out there. We’ll have to find – ”

“Stop talking, or the next thing I shoot is your foot,” Hux interrupts, because he refuses to think about that right now. Or ever.

Ren does go quiet for a few seconds, though probably not because Hux asked him too, more likely distracted by the next mad thing, if judging by the look in his eyes while he walks around the body. “When can you get it in the morgue?”

“Never,” Hux says, though he’s already certain this will be a losing battle – granted, the mere potential for having his name stamped across this creature’s discovery is already creeping in to assuage the revulsion that it exists at all. “I don’t do necropsies.”

“He’s mostly a person,” Ren says, disappearing from view when he crouches next to the body. “On the outside.”

Hux risks a glance down and manages to contain a shudder at the sight of Ren poking at the creatures damned head-tongue-thing. “Stop that!”

“ _Why_?” Ren snaps, though he blessedly pulls his hand back even while blinking upward in seemingly honest question. “He’s dead.”

Hux glares back, setting his jaw and suffering a reluctant epiphany about his foreseeable future: he’s going to be stuck in this department forever. If this is what happens in little over a week, Ren’s is going to get himself _killed_ poking his fingers at figurative sockets at the very moment Hux stops looking.

"Sucks, though," Ren says, voice low and somehow smug while he pulls out his phone, hopefully for some sort of containment facility. "Guess you won't make it to the other autopsy."

Hux stares for a few seconds, somewhat bemused, until he remembers _that_ fight. "Damn it, Ren."

**Author's Note:**

> I can also be found on the [twitters](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en) at Ezlebe.


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